The Marijuana works by affecting the brain it’s a drug like many others with different effects on different people the active ingredient is called Tetrahydrocannabinol or THC. THC bonds to protein specific receptors in the brain to produce a number of results it can have a mild sedative effect and it can also lower your inhibitions marijuana can increase your pulse lower your blood pressure and increases your appetite it can also interfere with short-term memory lower your reaction time and make you unsteady on your feet but so can lots of other things that we like to eat drink or smoke.
The real question is whether it’s dangerous enough to be made illegal and that’s where the screaming usually starts. There’s no evidence that marijuana causes a physical dependency like heroine does some argue thought that it can become psychologically addictive some argue that the smoke it carcinogenic and causes lung cancer or respiratory disease others argue that regular use can affect the immune system. There were still more argues that it increases the chance of developing a psychotic illness. In life have both a benefit and a harm no one should be under the illusion that marijuana has no harms the question is that we should care about is how much harm is there a marijuana and does that harm outweigh the benefits so much that it should be made illegal. There’s a growing body of evidence that marijuana has use in many medical conditions to improve quality of life and you need only talk to one of the gazillion marijuana users out there to hear about its other benefits as well.
Moreover there are lot of things in the world that can be absolutely harm us that are totally legal. The two most obvious choices are tobacco and alcohol and both of these substances are regulated but legal in most of the world. They can provide us with a useful benchmark against which we can compare marijuana. About two year ago a study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association investigating the effects of marijuana and tobacco on pulmonary function. They followed more than 5000 men and women for over 20 years, waning to see how smoking tobacco and marijuana affected lung health. What did they find not surprisingly tobacco use had significant negative effects on lung function marijuana used though had none? No lungs effects at all. They couldn’t even show that very high use of marijuana was bad for lung function. Although the study wasn’t powered for that specific analysis their conclusion and I quote from the Journal of the American Medical Association “Cannabis might have healthful effects on painful sensation, appetite, mode and management of other chronic symptoms. Our finding suggest that occasional use of marijuana for these or others purposes may not be associated with adverse consequences on pulmonary function”.
Moreover it is assumed that the use of marijuana by teenagers is harmful to brain development the National Institute of Drugs Abuse (NIDA) warns teens in particular to avoid marijuana as their little brains are still developing. And the weed main psychoactive ingredient THC definitely does act on the brain. It mimics the brain’s natural endocannabinoids which regulate our physiological functions such as appetite, pain, memory and mood. Now anything that affects the brains chemistry should be used very carefully. Our brain is a well regulated machine and it is a bad idea to do something bad with that system.
Now the Question is that Is smoking weed actually damaging your brain? Well our brain does adjust to anything you put into it, but to date, the studies that we have seen that haven’t been able to prove any serious long term effects on the brain itself from moderate marijuana consumption.
If we look at lung health. There is a huge disagreement about whether or not marijuana smoke is harmful to the lungs. According to 2014 study, there is no difference in the breathing of those who do not smoke at all and those who smoke marijuana regularly. But at lung.org contests that all smoke is harmful to the lungs. Basically there is no clear, demonstrable evidence that pot-heads have any more difficulty breathing than the average non user. Interestingly there may be a reason to believe that marijuana smoke actually has a positive effect on lung health. After the use of marijuana the marijuana-smokers assuming they don’t smoke tobacco products. Though this The American Lung Association continues to push for more research into this and the data suggests that there isn’t too much harm to the lungs as far as marijuana smoke goes.
And now Cancer. So we know that tobacco smoking can give you cancer, so is week smoking also going to cause cancer? If you look into research so far, it looks like it’s actually the opposite. Marijuana can saves lives by helping cancer patients eat and sleep and recover quicker from the effects of cancer treatments. There is also some evidence suggests that marijuana may actually kill cancer cells!